iseecerulean

I made a big batch of gray glaze to do the fireplaces and all the trim, so I wouldn't run out.

Then I glazed the fireplaces, thought it looked yucky (top picture), so painted over the glaze with white paint (bottom picture)...a little of the gray shows through still, which looks pretty cool.

After all that messing around I bought some satin varnish to use on the fireplaces and the trim...I'm not going to try glazing the trim.

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I got a catalog in the mail from miniatures.com...I told Matthew he's lucky I'm working in 1:24 scale instead of 1:12 scale because there's so much really cool stuff in 1:12 scale.  I gave the catalog to Bessie...it was too heartbreaking to have it here...I want this and can't have it, this and can't have it, this and can't have it, etc...

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It didn't turn out any better or any worse than the first one.

When I first put it in the room I hated it...too matchy-matchy.  This morning, looking at the picture, I don't hate it, but think I should have lined the patterns up so that the floor flows right up into the wallpaper...you know, if you're going to matchy-matchy, do it right.

I think I'll probably end up using the first floor.  What do you guys think?

The faux parquet floor looks much better...it's not perfect, and I bet if I tried it again I could do better, but it's really not that bad.  It's in the foyer, which is a teeny room that can only be seen through another room, and it looks great in place.

Had I been paying attention to the wallpaper pattern, though, I'd have used my design with the squares between the octagons instead of the one with the diamonds between the octagons.  I didn't even realize the wallpaper had octagons until I looked at this picture...I picked it for the color and the scale of the pattern.  How cool that it has octagons!  Maybe I will do a different parquet floor...

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The other wood floors turned out better because I remembered to sand the glue residue off before I stained them this time...yet there is still enough variation to give it an 'old wood floor' look, which I like. 

I'm not sure I'm going to bother sanding down and refinishing the bedroom floor, most of it will be covered by a rug anyway.  I haven't decided yet.

The hardwood floors for the upstairs hallway and library have been laid...they need to be sanded and stained yet. 

I cut and papered a piece of balsa for the bathroom floor...it needs to be sealed yet.

The faux parquet floor for the foyer is coming along...my original pattern had a smaller octagon inside the big one, but I didn't cut it into the floor because I wasn't sure how difficult it would be to stain different areas different colors.  I figured it would be easier to add more detail later, and impossible to take away detail, so I started simply.  I don't like the pattern without that second octagon...you can't even tell there is an octagon the way it looks now, it looks like just diamonds...and it wasn't hard to keep the stain in separate spaces as long as I was careful...so I'm going to add the second octagon.

I could use Houseworks fixtures (not the 'stained glass' ones though, yuck)... they're ready to install, but all in brass.

I could use LED lighting, which isn't hot and is longer lasting, but I'd have to make my own fixtures.

Or, I could use a combination of the two.

I like the idea of making my own fixtures...they would be unique.  I also like the idea of using LEDs.  On the other hand, I could probably paint the Houseworks ones, which would be much easier.

How do I power them?  Does either choice come with plug-ins or are the ends bare wire and I'd have to put on plug-ins?  Houseworks has a power strip, which looks more user-friendly than power supplies...could I use that with the LED lights, or would I have to use a power supply?  If I have to use a power supply which one do I need and how do I hook the lights to it?

I'm so confused.

It's got to be stained and polished yet, of course, but I wanted to show it to you now because I'm quite impressed with myself.  Something incredible happened...after I made it...it fit!
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I spent most of last night polishing furniture...those poor things are in rough shape.  I got most of the tarnish off, but there are still some spots that are so damaged I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  After I got done cleaning them I played around with them inside the house...they're very cool.

The hinge on the big door of the icebox is broken...I'm not sure if it was that way before I cleaned the grime off or if I broke it.  I was working over the sink with the plug in, and I couldn't find any teeny metal pieces, but who knows.   I'll have to putty that door shut (I don't want to put glue on an antique).

Whew!  It took a lot of elbow grease, but this is what they look like now.  I need to get some brass cleaner to finish the job...though I'm not sure I want all of them to be all the way clean.

A magnet won't stick to them, so I don't think they're brass plated, I think they're solid brass.

Marcie gave me these, they used to be her mother's.  She had tons of them...miniature stagecoaches, lamps, and telephones...a typewriter, microscope...etc...  Most of them have pencil sharpers in them...they're all really cool. 

I took the ones I thought I could use in my dollhouse...they're not scale miniatures but I think the size is right.  After everyone else at work that wants any goes through what's left I may grab a few more to use in future projects.

They appear to be either brass or brass plated...I need to clean them.  I like the look of them tarnished, but my hands got really grubby handling them and I don't want them to turn my dollhouse black.

Saturday felt like an entire weekend and Sunday felt like an afternoon.

The weather was fantastic on Saturday.  I puttered around on the computer while I had my morning coffee..I bought a rug for my dollhouse... if I like it I'm going to buy three more.  I browsed around Etsy too, but didn't see anything that caught my attention.

Kate worked at a charity run that a Dad of one of her girlfriend's organized...I dropped her off bright and early, then came back home, where Matthew and I spent some 'we've got the house to ourselves' time before we went downtown.  Downtown was nice...it was busy, but this time of year it was neighborly locals, not pushy tourists, so I didn't mind.  There was a shindig at the indy record store that Matt wanted to go to, so while he did that I went down to the hobby shop to get more crown molding, then popped into an art gallery and the hat store, where I got myself a new summer weight cloche.  I caught up with Matthew in the guitar store, helped him load his new bass guitar, bass amp and pile of records in the car, then we had lunch with some of his friends.

We got back home just in time for me to go get Kate and her girlfriend, Tess, from the mall, where Tess' Mom dropped them off after the race.  They took me down to Macy's to buy Kate "the cutest ever" prom dress, then we zipped over to Tess' house to pick up her bag, so she could spend the night...we visited with her family for a bit and Tess showed me some of the art she's made.  After we got back here I showed Tess my art (her favorite was the mermaid box you made me, Susan), then we went through my stash and I gave her some stuff I don't want anymore that she was excited to get...broken watches, doll parts, etc...  By the time we were done with that it was time for Dr. Who, dinner, and a couple of movies we own on DVD that Tess had been wanting to see, during which I fell asleep on the living room floor.

The weather was dreary Sunday...warm, but cloudy and drizzling.  I made new floor patterns on thin graph paper, then went to JoAnne's for black cardstock to transfer them to.  I sketched out a couple patterns for the faux parquet floor in the foyer and watched a couple hours of Top Gear in the afternoon when I needed a break, and that's pretty much all I did all day.  Blah.

As I was working on the floor patterns...holding a flashlight propped between my shoulder and cheek so I could see what I was doing...I really regretted my decision to not light the dollhouse.  I didn't anticipate exactly how dark the rooms were going to be once the house was put together...I assumed that with all the rooms open on one side they'd get plenty of light, but they don't really. 

It's too late now to run tapewire under wallpaper, but I'm sure I could still run round wire if I kept all the lights on the exterior walls, so I could run the wires through holes out to where I could hide them under the siding.  I've got to price everything out again to reassess my decision...though I'm pretty sure I'm going to light it...why go to all this work to make something I won't be able to see?

While I was at  JoAnne's I got three different papers as possibilities for the bathroom floor.  I was going to make a bunch of individual 1/4"x1/4" tiles out of basswood, but I'm just not up for that much more cutting and sanding... 

I like the flowery print one...as a floor it's unexpected but not out of the realm of possibility.

I was planning on doing all the rooms at the same time in stages...all the floors, then all the baseboard, all the crown molding, etc..  Now I think I'm going to do one room at a time instead, just because I'd really love to see one that's finished.